


Agent Awkward

by tawg



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain Awkward (blog) references, Gen, I feel like phil is the kind of guy who reads advice columns for entertainment, Shield has paperwork for everything, and accidentally picks up some good advice skills
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-14
Updated: 2012-12-14
Packaged: 2018-10-15 08:43:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10553414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tawg/pseuds/tawg
Summary: The worst part about managing agents and assets was having to mediate their breakups.





	

It was a known protocol at SHIELD that if you chose to disobey the fraternisation rules and your fraternisation came to an end, you needed to see Agent Coulson and fill out a 155-1068b (Mutual Notification of the Cessation of External Activities – Classification: Pantsfeelings). Unfortunately for Agent Coulson, there were times when only one half (or third, or so on) of the relationship wanted to disengage from the fraternisation. Despite multiple memos and group e-mails on the subject of it not actually being his job to deal with anything but lodging the actual form, Agent Coulson still found himself stuck with occasional bouts of relationship counselling.

A consistent problem was that breakups were rarely mutual. Another problem was the motivation behind the breakup. Agent Coulson had been subjected to far too many hours of one agent assuring the other agent that, “The risk doesn’t matter to me! If one of us dies on the field, then it’s better that we die knowing that we’re loved!”, and had definitely spent too much time witnessing agents trying to renegotiate the terms of their relationship. “I’ll start doing the dishes more often.” “It’s not just about the dishes.” “I’ll do all of the dishes!”

It was widely suspected that part of the motivation behind his most recent death-related inactivation was to offload some of the ‘feelingsproblems’ onto someone else for a while. When Agent Coulson finally returned to work, he brought with him a draft of the 144-989a (Notification of the Cessation of External Activities Effective Immediately – Classification: allfeelings). The purpose of the new form was simply to inform the other agent (or agents) in a relationship that the relationship was over. The form was then lodged in the system and line managers were expected to take the information into account when assigning people to initiatives. If they didn’t, it became a HR problem and (thankfully) not Agent Coulson’s. 

Interestingly, the single-paged 144-989a took far more time to explain than the sixteen-paged 155-1068b. 

“Is this the whole form?”

“Yes.”

“All of it?”

“Yes.”

“But there’s only one box to check.”

“Yes.”

“In section B, where is says ‘Reasons for disengaging from non-workplace relationship’, there’s just the one box to tick. It just says _‘Because I don’t want to be in a relationship with you anymore’_.”

“That,” Agent Coulson said, over and over in the first week of the form being put to use, “is because that is the only reason you need.”

It was taking a while to catch on, but Agent Coulson had high hopes that the message would get through. And if SHIELD agents insisted in entangling themselves in drama and expecting him to deal with it, well, he had a few more ‘deaths’ up his sleeve.


End file.
